July 13

Good hikers

We got off to a good start this morning.  Full, heavy food bags.  So it goes when you hike out of town.  We stopped for a second to check out this swimming hole on the river we had heard about, called Peace Rock.  It was a really huge drop from a rock ledge, into the river, but we didn't do it.  The surrounding area was a dump.  Trash everywhere.  Apparently locals come here a lot and tear the place up.  Broken glass, full bags of garbage, dirty diapers.  Gross.  So, we kept on moving.  Had a fairly steep climb out of town.  Passed a Pocahontas, and Minnehaha, spring.  Didn't get water.  Bad move.  Had to ration water, and it was hot again.  Stopped for a quick break at Pulpit Rock, where a local astronomy enthusiast was looking at some sun spots.  Soon after, I arrived at the Pinnacle, where Slims and Apache were taking a lunch break.  We took in the nice views there, and climbed around on the rocks.  We found a cave that started at the top of the cliff and dropped about 30 feet into the mountain, before leading back out to the side of the cliff again.  After that nice break, we pushed on to Hawk Mountain road.  We went 0.2 miles east on the road to the Eckville shelter.  It's a really nice shelter on an ATC property, with a bunk house, flush toilet, and shower room.  Rainbow Eyes was getting back on the trail there, and was waiting for us when we arrived.  A friend of his was there two, planning to hike with us for a couple days.  Glad to see him back on the trail, and to hear that his ankle is feeling much better.  It would have been easy to call it a day there, but we kept on going, leaving the nice shelter and shower behind.  What were we thinking?  This isn't our style at all.  We're actually doing some big miles today, like real thru-hikers.  We finally stopped at Allentown Hiking Club shelter after pulling a 22.2 mile day.  We managed to get that far, even with taking a ton of breaks.  Go us!

Doing some spelunking at The Pinnacle.